Quote:
Originally Posted by countmeworthy
What if you are bed ridden? And can't come to the fellowship meetings? At first, a few people will gather around the ill individual...reading from the HWMR..maybe playing a tape from the meeting...but after a while, the visitations will taper off. ESPECIALLY if the person was just a mediocre member of the LSM...
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I saw a variant on that as my mother's health deteriorated over a period of six months ultimately ending in her death. The sequence of events was understood as inevitable.
But as time went on, I remember my dad mentioning that at least a couple of times one or another of the brothers he had often had Saturday breakfast with asked him in a typically upbeat way "how's is going?" to which my dad could only say something like "other than the fact that my wife id dying, I guess OK." I don't know what he really thought about it, but I suspect that he had at least some realization that being upbeat is just part of the system.
And when we had the funeral, I was fit to be tied. I appreciate that so many did come. But it seemed more about spouting off upbeat memories (that at least in some cases did not compare to reality). It was a sort of zoo. I was there to pay respects to my mother and continue to mourn her death and they were busy being chipper and saying how she was one of the most unopinionated people they had ever known. (I wondered who that person was that they were talking about.)
That was several years back now. But their shallow . . . no . . . hollow effort to deal with anything that is not simply Christ and the church and finding good material as they denigrate everyone else in the name of oneness is just a stick in my craw. I wish that the rest of my family saw it clearly enough to get out. Then I would probably just quit thinking about this system of error that calls itself the "Lord's recovery."
Just the comments surrounding some who committed suicide, or even just had trouble with their marriages. People need more than more meetings and more HWMR. They need real people who share in their sufferings. Who come along side with honest help (which is very different from an exhortation to suck-it-up).
And they may need real help, including some kind of medication.
No matter how positively I think concerning some of the individuals, I'm not sure that a system as bereft of real Christian experiance and belief as they are hitched to can equip them to provide any of the kind of comfort or other help that is needed.
I'm glad I am not relying on them for what I need. (Of course they would say that you just need Christ. That is true. But Christ has real, live arms and legs in the form of other Christians. They would deny those to people in need.)